Yeah, the "Lex and Lois" gossip is just to showcase Trish's ongoing status to Perry as a Planet pariah and to give White a foil...someone to yell at whenever he interacts with Clark. The real story is how Clark deals with the trust issues. I suspect as he sulks in the storeroom, the issue will now be told in flashback to when he reunited with Lois and the conversation he had with her that prepares him for an inevitability like this.